Three brewery workers seriously injured in accident

Three brewery workers in Burton-on-Trent were seriously injured in an accident involving a caustic jet of soda, accident claim specialists report.

According to personal injury compensation experts familiar with the case, the incident took place at the Molson Coors brewing plant in June of 2008, where three specialist sub-contractor engineers had been performing maintenance work on a faulty vale before becoming blasted with a stream of caustic soda.

Nearly 6,000 litres of the caustic liquid leaked from the valve, which had been connected to a nearby detergent tank. All three engineers were rushed to hospital due to their injuries, as one of them was struck with temporary blindness, another suffered irritation to his eyes and sustained minor burns across his skin, while the third and most seriously injured worker suffered burns on 25 per cent of his body that have left him both scarred and with a heat sensitivity which makes being out in the sun or being subjected to some other heat source extremely difficult for the man.

Personal injury claims experts remarked that the Health and Safety Executive investigated the incident and reported in a court hearing that the three sub contractors were neither provided with proper instruction or protective clothing. The three workers had been given visors to wear, but the overalls they had been issued were made from a cloth that proved useless as a barrier from the liquid, which soaked right through them, proving them wholly inadequate for the job the three were performing.

The HSE successfully prosecuted the brewery, located in Burton-on-Trent, and Molson Coors was found to have been in breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act, given a fine of £14,000, and ordered to pay court costs of £43,674.